July 26, 2007

An excellent cartoon on the world of news. Remember...if you weren't reading it, would it have ever happened the way that it did? Would it have ever been as sensational? If someone wasn't watching yank's and iraqi's snipe each other would boys be whooping it up after making a kill? Do you think that the very fact that we are observing it in the most rapid mediums possible, instant reporting, daily bombardment of current disasters, and an up to the minute body count...do you think that changes the outcome, the design? Any simple physics book will speak of the outcome of an experiment being affected by the very nature of being observed.

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."
- Gilda Radner

Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn’t have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn’t afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn’t know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white man arrived and I don’t know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.

John (Fire) Lame Deer, Sioux Lakota, 1903-1976

"To begin to think with purpose is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment."
- James Allen

"The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism."
- Norman Vincent Peale

"it is best to learn as we go, not go as we have learned."
- Leslie Jeanne Sahler

"I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an "Honest Man."
- George Washington

“If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.”